This article is about integrity. Is it possible for a left-leaning journalist to have integrity?
Yes. I think Taibbi tries to pursue facts. In the past I did not like him because his bias came in the form of only pursuing stories where the facts would most likely damage the right. That is another form of bias; but it beats the alternative– a lying scumbag leftist “journalist.”
I can no longer say that Taibbi is biased. He will pursue stories that damage the left if those are the facts.
Excerpts from EAT ME, MSNBC
The Trump-Russia story was white-hot and still in its infancy. That same day, news leaked from Israel that Americans warned the Mossad not to share information with the incoming administration, because Russia had “leverages of pressure” on Trump. Asked by Chris about the scandal generally, I made what I thought was a boring-but-true observation, that we in the media didn’t “have any hard evidence” of a conspiracy, just not a lot to go on. This was the TV equivalent of a shrug.
Nance jumped on this in a way I remember feeling was unexpected and oddly personal. “Matt’s a journalist. I’m an intelligence officer,” he snapped. “There is no such thing as coincidence in my world.” Chris jumped in to note reporters have different standards, and I agreed, saying, “We haven’t seen anything that allows us to say unequivocally that x and y happened last year.”
“Unequivocally” seemed to trigger Nance. With regard to the DNC hack, he said, “That evidence is unequivocal. It’s on the Internet.” As for “these links possibly with the Trump team,” he proclaimed, “You’re probably never going to see the CIA’s report.” Nance went on to answer “no” to a question from Chris about whether leaks “were coming from the intelligence community,” Chris wrapped up with a sensible suggestion that we all not rely on a parade of “leaks and counter-leaks,” and the segment was done.
To this day I get hit probably a hundred times a day with the question, “What happened to you, man?” What happened? That segment happened, but to MSNBC, not me.
That exchange between Nance and me was symbolic of a choice the network faced. They could either keep doing what reporters had done since the beginning of time, confining themselves to saying things they could prove. Or, they could adopt a new approach, in which you can say anything is true or confirmed, so long as a politician or intelligence official told you it was.
We know how that worked out. I was never invited back, nor for a long time was any other traditionally skeptical reporter, while Nance — one of the most careless spewers of provable errors ever to appear on a major American news network — became one of the Peacock’s most familiar faces.
The Nance situation was symbolic of what happened at the network from the beginning of Trump’s term, really beginning in early 2017. It went from being a place where you had to be at least in the ballpark of demonstrably true to being a place where the factual standard was, “Whatever dogshit drops out of the mouth of any hack or spook.”
Moreover the network didn’t just re-report this stuff, it became the favored launching pad for all the most blatant blue-Anon disinformation, like California congressman Adam Schiff saying he had “more than circumstantial” evidence of collusion, or former Obama defense official Evelyn Farkas suggesting the Trump administration would try to destroy evidence if they “found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff’s dealing with Russians.” Farkas later testified under oath that she “didn’t know anything” about collusion.
W o W w/out clicking
? Does Nance mean Malcolm?
And Farkas to Boot
Double W o w
I give Matt somewhat of a pass because he wrote for Rolling Stone, they have a demonstrable bias there and if you want anything published, your work must reflect that bias.
Matt going independent and writing at Substack has essentially removed the shackles. He can now go after the story, wherever it leads him, and report the truth.
But it would be a mistake to think that he is,”On our side”. Matt, much like Alan Derswicz, Glenn Greenwald, Joe Rogan, Barri Weizz, Brett Weinstein, and Michael Malice, they are now big enough to speak their mind but will never ever vote Republican. They pine for the old Democratic Party, the one that valued civil rights and represented the downtrodden.
“They pine for the old Democratic Party, the one that valued civil rights and represented the downtrodden.”???? Would that be the dems enacting welfare so those niggers would be voting for the party of LBJ for 200 years?
Too close to now? How about those dems wearing white sheets and lynching blacks? Still too close? How about them dem carpetbaggers flooding into the south post Civil War to strip the bones of the Confederacy of any remaining flesh? They spawned those white sheets BTW.
And nothing says representing the downtrodden enacting an income tax and a central bank…how did that work out anyway?
Did you know that our #1 enemy, the teacher’s unions, are like 97% dem? Of course now that their work is essentially done…oh wait, they’re vigorously pushing genital multilation now, sorry my bad.
Lots more if you need a bigger cluebat.
RED PILL ALERT! RED PILL ALERT!
Dems, in context with any particular time, were always a party that were at odds with the constitution.
Just because the Democrats have become so radical that a JFK would not fit in doesn’t mean that JFK wasn’t a ruinous president.
Ignorant Dem voters still think all the hoaxes were true. They sit and watch the tv and believe what they’re told to believe without question or actual thought.
The left never admits mistakes or lies or apologizes for anything so the people who listen to them never know the truth and walk around in ministry of truth bubbles.
Maybe if more liberals like Taibbi are bashed like he was for not toeing the Borg mindset people will finally pay attention.
“Dems, in context with any particular time, were always a party that were at odds with the constitution.”
Of course, but old-school Democrats like Alan Dershowitz disagree. He, and those I mentioned above, believe they are the party of Women’s Suffrage, The Social Security, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (even though all the Southern Democrats opposed it), the party of the ACLU, of fair and equal voting standards (yeah, right), of labor unions protecting worker rights, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, environmental protection, social safety nets. These are their commandments, etched in their holy book, and all have been perverted to do what not was intended.
I need a “bigger cluebat,” MMinWA. A full-blown guest article would be great. (One of your best comments, ever, imo.)
Every time Dershowitz’s name comes up I recall that he was involved in the Epstein plea deal that let him off scot-free for years. And I doubt he will ever vote for a Republican. I appreciate his commentary when it makes sense, but I am well aware that he has used his legal knowledge and clout to protect the powerful and evil.
And Dershowitz also represented Roman Polanski – who insisted that ‘every man wants to have sex with underage girls’.
I suppose Polanski is the perfect man for today’s culture. He would argue that children should be allowed to make their own choices.
Everything you mentioned were not dems looking out for the downtrodden as if that was what was intended. They were in fact nothing more than getting a camel’s nose under the tent. Once any of the things you or I mentioned happened, they were immediately ramped up to 11.
I’m not going to go through them one by one but lets start with possibly the most contentious, giving women the right to vote. What that did besides allowing women to vote was open the floodgates that eventually gave the vote to so many people with no skin in the game to vote themselves a piece that that is the main reason we are where we are today with over a $31T National Debt. Now of course elections don’t matter, another consequence of dem Chinese flu legislation-with plenty of R help I’ll add(scum), none the less, passing out the right to vote with DLs to illegals is baked in.
Believing for a moment that anyone(almost anyone) in DC gives a flying fuck about what us rubes want and need, that they really want the best for us & our families, is out of their mind.
And for the second most contentious piece of garbage, thinking on it I give that distinction to the National Firearms Act of 1934. The rabble rousing big media at the time working with the FBI stirred up public opinion because a couple gangsters were using Thompsons to rob banks. A dem controlled House and Senate came up this nightmare and a dem President signed it. From being able to walk into a hardware or gun store and walk out with a Browning .50 full auto with no more paper work than a receipt, it’s just about morphed into what was intended all along by the scum dems “looking out for the downtrodden”, i.e. confiscation.
I don’t know who you think you are arguing with, but it’s certainly is not me. All I said was that those Democrats that I listed above are united in their feeling that their party stands for civil rights and helping the downtrodden, if you think otherwise, take it up with them.
I’m debating someone who actually thinks the dems were ever trying to represent the downtrodden. That would be you pal. You make a lot of senseless remarks like that and I’m trying to disabuse of notions like that. It’s a fucking fantasy. Stop.
As for “taking it up with them” that appears to be as pointless as trying to take it up with you.
Taibbi learned his “journalistic lesson” when Breitbart kicked his proverbial ass at a CPAC. I was there. Searching for the video.